Scared the s..t out of me

[lamont]

Has anyone tried to invert and kick down towards the bottom? I read about that somewhere else. When you are on a runaway to the surface, you should invert like you are swimming to the bottom. This should help buy some time until you can get things under contol or at least slow your ascent enough to safely reach the surface.

dd

You also need to be dumping out the rear dump for this to be effective. I've tried this before (simulated runaway) and it was pretty tough to kick down against a fully inflated wing. Even against the maximum inflation, however, with the wing burping I could kick down against it. Pulling the butt dump caused the wing to substantially deflate and it was much easier to kick down.

I could also see this as a part of a 2-step strategy to fixing the problem -- go head down, dump out the rear dump and kick down to below your previous depth -- then go head up, dump out the corrugated hose and detatch the inflator, then stabilize yourself.

The thing which I'm not sure about, however, is if you really have your first stage blowup and you're getting HP pressures to your LP inflator. That could increase the flow rate which could invalidate all the engineering and practice and make it so that the inflator was delivering gas faster than the wing could dump.

 

[Hank49]

As a last resort, unhook and dump your whole scuba unit and let it go up from 50 feet or less. Either do a cesa or hook up with your buddy and get his octo if he's close. If you do a cesa, deflate and unhook the hose at the surface and get back down for a safety stop.

 

[rongoodman]

That was one of the drills Ed Hayes does in his Buoyancy 1 class. I can keep a full 30lb Eclipse down by kicking, but I'm not sure I could do the same with a larger wing or a suit full of air.

 

[sunapeebob]

This is not an inflator problem, it was a dry suit inflator detachment. My second deep dive off Rockport, Chester Poling - last November I had a new (2-3 dive) drysuit. As we descending, I was using the drysuit inflator. At about 50 ft, I did not hear the inflator and the feel of the drysuit "relaxing". At about 90 feet, I was getting pretty squeezed. I tried to do the inflator, but it would not work. I was in my wreck class and I signaled my dive buddy, my son, and the instructor over. They found the problem with the detached inflator. I felt the reattached inflator. As mentioned in other posts, I was anxious, but thinking about what I would do. I knew I could ascend, since my BC was fine. I used that to balance bouyancy until the inflator was fixed. After it was fixed, I simply rested for a minute or so (letting my pulse slow down!). The rest of the dive was fine. Interestingly, the next day the same thing happened at a different location at about 60 ft. I was able to stop analyze and fix it. I will tell you that that was very reassuring. I guess we need some adversity to teach us hard lessons. This thread has made me want to practice detaching my inflator hose for the BC and practice. I am also starting the book portion of the Rescue Diver course. It points out many of the issues brought up here in these threads.